Leading NZ child nutrition expert and co-founder of The Food Tree, Rachael Wilson, joined us on Parents We’ve Met recently for an empowering chat about taking the fight out of food. Listen to the full conversation on your favourite podcast platform and help yourself to some of Rachael’s bite-sized insights below.
Health & Wellbeing Home & Food
Five fresh thoughts on feeding kids
Less pressure, more connection
Mealtimes should be a time of connection and coming together as a family. However, we parents often inadvertently serve up hearty side dishes of pressure. Our best intentions to get our kids to eat well and enough can make them anxious. And when you feel anxious, you don’t feel hungry.
Instead of obsessing about what everyone did or didn’t eat, we can shift the focus and ask ourselves –
Did everyone feel calm and relaxed? And was there enough of the foods everyone could eat to feel full?
Sounds simple enough, but counting spoonfuls and begging your child to take just one more bite can be hard habits to let go of. Let’s take a closer look at Rachael’s responses to some of the family food challenges parents often come up against.
1. Do kids have to finish their dinner before dessert?
Short answer, no. From a neuroscience perspective, ‘no dessert until you’ve eaten all your dinner’ reinforces the idea that dinner isn’t very nice. We want to let food be food. We don’t want dessert on a higher pedestal. Here’s a wild idea – serve dessert with dinner a couple of times a week. Yes, you read that correctly – serve a bowl of ice cream alongside a plate of lasagna.
Forget the lasagna, my kids would just eat the dessert! Rachael says we might be surprised – in her experience kids will take a bite of what they want, when they want it, and will finish when they’re full. Not only does this bring dessert down from its lofty heights, but it also helps our kids avoid over-eating (eating in excess of fullness).
And when kids do finish all their dinner, Rachael suggests we play it cool, no song and dance in celebration. This teaches them to trust their body’s intuition. Praise can add pressure and ideally, we remove any pressure around food.
'No dessert until you’ve eaten all your dinner’ reinforces the idea that dinner isn’t very nice.
2. School lunchboxes – what shall we do when they come home half eaten?
School can be very dysregulating so this is complex, but generally speaking – don’t be too concerned by a lunchbox that’s barely been touched. Children don’t have to eat all their lunch. You might find your child better manages a big breakfast and then a big afternoon tea when they get home. Aim to give them a boost to get them through the school day. Pack in their lunchbox what you know they’ll eat to give them energy.
Rachael recommends getting kids to help pack their own lunchboxes, allowing them choice and autonomy within parameters. Her own 10-year-old packs her lunch, knowing she needs to include some protein to help fill her up, some vegetables, some fruit and something snacky the give her energy. Surprisingly, the vege component has been parsley one day, fennel another! But she eats it, so fair enough.
Children will make mistakes, and we have to let them. “There are times when she hasn’t packed enough and came home starving,” Rachael recalls. “I ask her, ‘What could you differently next time?’” This approach promotes agency and dignity – letting kids learn from what their body is telling them.
This approach promotes agency and dignity – letting kids learn from what their body is telling them.
3. Is hiding vegetables a good idea?
Not really, no, although it depends on the age of the child and their awareness. We don’t want our kids to lose their trust in us, so let them know you’re blending spinach into the sauce as soon as they’re able to spot it. We want kids to grow up able to eat vegetables without it being a covert operation. The goal is young adults who help themselves to salad at their university hall!
4. Easter eggs – all at once or locked down and rationed?
When we limit or restrict certain foods, kids want them more. But it can be uncomfortable to think of kids having free-reign with a mountain of chocolate though, right? Rachael suggests some structure around ‘special treat’ foods:
• On the special day, allow kids to have as much as they want, while having other foods available. • Over the next few days, make the eggs available at snack time – alongside healthy options, a glass of milk and some carrots and hummus for example.
How we talk about these foods is so important. Having a negative impression of ‘bad’ food leads us to feel shame or guilt around ‘treat’ foods, which then actually leads us to eat more of them.
5. My child says “I hate vegetables” – what do I do?
Rachael offers a calm and simple response: “We don’t talk about food like that in this house.”
We want kids to have a growth mindset around food. You could say, “It’s just something you don’t eat yet” or “You’re still learning to like it.” A closed mindset shuts down future opportunities, where as a growth mindset reminds us that while something might not be working for us right now, there’s still room for change.
